Since 2018, we’ve equipped a thousand people with the tools of journalism to demystify local government processes. Read about our favorite civic side hustle, what we’ve learned and where we’re headed next.
By Natalie Christian-Frazier
A Chicago Documenter live-tweeting a local government public meeting. Photo: Pat Nabong/City Bureau
On a Thursday evening in spring, public school teachers, a couple bartenders, a software developer, and several parents entered a room in Bronzeville.
What brought them together? They were interested in holding local government accountable, and were there for an intro to City Bureau’s Chicago Documenters program.
With this recent orientation at the City Bureau office, we surpassed training 1,000 people as Chicago Documenters. Here’s a look at where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Who we are and what we do
Since 2018, the Chicago Documenters program has equipped over 1,000 community members with skills such as note-taking, live tweeting and online research to write complete and unabridged accounts of public meetings — where government bodies are required to conduct business and make decisions in the open.
Documenting is no easy feat, even for a seasoned journalist. Public meetings can be mystifying, monotonous and infuriating. But you can learn a lot, and there’s enough lore, drama and snappy one-liners to keep you on your toes. We like to call it a civic side hustle.
Together, Chicago Documenters have taken notes on or live-tweeted over 2,500 meetings — from Local School Councils to elections committees to City Council — earning a total of $280,000.
In terms of output, the goal of the program is to create a new public record to ensure there is transparency, visibility and accountability in local government. But through assignment submissions, one-on-one coaching, and group discussions, we’ve also seen Chicago Documenters sharpen their analysis of government and civic power.
We ask Documenters to follow-up on threads they’ve discovered, jot down their observations, and research answers to their own questions. For example: how does Chicago’s police accountability infrastructure work, or how are unelected officials appointed to the boards of certain agencies?
What we’ve learned
What have our 1,000 trained Documenters learned from this work? They’ve unlearned the sense of helplessness born from decades of divestments in South and West side neighborhoods. They understand the nuances of Chicago politics. They’ve learned that information access is the first step to people realizing their power.
Our Documenters have demanded city agencies post their agendas, received million-dollar grants to beautify neighborhood parks, influenced ethics policy changes, been elected to local office, and even started their own community newsrooms.
Eager to join in our efforts to document civic action in Chicago? We’re planning our next Documenters orientation for this fall — so stay tuned. You’ll find more details in our weekly Newswire newsletter, on our social media or at documenters.org.
Where we’re headed next
You can learn a lot from attending a public meeting, but they’re not the end-all, be-all of civic learning. Of the thousand people who have attended a Chicago Documenters training, about half have gone on to document a public meeting.
As the current Chicago Documenters facilitator and trainer, I feel the diversity in our community is the greatest strength of our program. Our Documenters are fairly representative of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods and range from baby boomers to Gen Z. Some are journalism students or freelancers; others are new to the lingo at these meetings or don’t have the experience or tools to easily take notes in Google Docs.
We aim to meet Chicago Documenters where they are and give them a metaphoric sandbox where they can practice new skills and produce information to meet their community’s needs. We have been designing and dreaming up more ways to engage and equip folks with fact checking, audio recording, interviewing, and other tools of journalism.
The people power we’ve built and nurtured is 1,000 people strong, incredibly invested in local civic change, and realizing our potential to change our city for the better more and more each day. From short conversations about Mexican food in Pilsen to housing disparities between Lincoln Park and North Lawndale, Chicago Documenters are building connections and community.
Whether we’re deputizing Documenters to interview their loved ones about upcoming local elections, equipping them with fact-checking skills that will help communities stay better informed, or discussing how tax-increment financing works, we’re headed wherever Documenters would like to go, and we know that place will be better for Chicago.
A version of this blog was first published in the July 3, 2024 edition of Newswire, a newsletter filled with civic knowledge and opportunities designed for Chicagoans who want to make a difference in the life of their communities by connecting them with civic knowledge and opportunities.
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